Introduction
With the recent recession John Maynard Keynes and his theories are being debated by millions of Americans, though likely without their knowledge, as his theories have become integral to America’s economic policy. A search of “John Maynard Keynes” on Google news, limited to just the past week, yields more than 200 results, illustrating the scope of Keynes’ continued influence. Fueled by concerns over unemployment and inflation the debate rages over government’s role in the economy, including regulation of industry, tax rates, and government spending to stimulate the economy. What people are really arguing over are the merits of supply-side economic versus demand-side. Keynes or “Keynesian economics is based on the notion that government can boost employment or cut inflation by manipulating the demand side of the economy—increasing government spending and expanding the money supply to boost employment and doing just the opposite to hold down inflation.”
“The two decades between 1919 and 1939 had seen great economic instability.” The economic troubles were being experienced both at home and abroad. In addition to the unemployment plaguing America and other “major capitalist industrial nations--…Britain, France, [and] Germany” —there was also “nightmare inflation, collapsing banks, [and] agrarian and industrial devastation.” The start of this economic collapse coincided with the end of World War I and the accompanying peace treaty.
Keynes, a British economist had been advising his government throughout World War I, including The Paris Peace Conference. He entered the international scene of economics with his 1919 book titled, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. The book captured his views following the Treaty...
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...s, 1989. Print. (432)
Ibid, 432
"What Was the New Deal?" Franklin D. Roosevelt - American Heritage Center, Inc. 2006. Web. 21 May 2011. .
Hofstadter, The America Political Tradition, 442
Subtopics as suggested by Donald Morgan.
Qtd In Reich, Economist Keynes, 3
Qtd In "John Maynard Keynes." The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. 2008. Library of Economics and Liberty. 5 June 2011. .
Ibid
Hicks, J. R. Mr. Keynes and the "Classics"; A Suggested Interpretation. Econometrica. Vol. 5, No. 2 (Apr., 1937), pp. 147-159 < http://www.jstor.org/stable/1907242> P. 147
"Economics A-Z | Economist.com." The Economist - World News, Politics, Economics, Business & Finance. Web. 22 May 2011. .
The Great Depression tested America’s political organizations like no other event in United States’ history except the Civil War. The most famous explanations of the period are friendly to Roosevelt and the New Deal and very critical of the Republican presidents of the 1920’s, bankers, and businessmen, whom they blame for the collapse. However, Amity Shlaes in her book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, contests the received wisdom that the Great Depression occurred because capitalism failed, and that it ended because of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Shlaes, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a syndicated financial columnist, argues that government action between 1929 and 1940 unnecessarily deepened and extended the Great Depression.
Comparing Keynesian Economics and Supply Side Economic Theories Two controversial economic policies are Keynesian economics and Supply Side economics. They represent opposite sides of the economic policy spectrum and were introduced at opposite ends of the 20th century, yet still are the most famous for their effects on the economy of the United States when they were used. The founder of Keynesian economic theory was John Maynard Keynes.
"America's Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal."DPLA. Digital Public Library of America. Web. 20 Nov 2013. .
During the 1920’s, America was a prosperous nation going through the “Big Boom” and loving every second of it. However, this fortune didn’t last long, because with the 1930’s came a period of serious economic recession, a period called the Great Depression. By 1933, a quarter of the nation’s workers (about 40 million) were without jobs. The weekly income rate dropped from $24.76 per week in 1929 to $16.65 per week in 1933 (McElvaine, 8). After President Hoover failed to rectify the recession situation, Franklin D. Roosevelt began his term with the hopeful New Deal. In two installments, Roosevelt hoped to relieve short term suffering with the first, and redistribution of money amongst the poor with the second. Throughout these years of the depression, many Americans spoke their minds through pen and paper. Many criticized Hoover’s policies of the early Depression and praised the Roosevelts’ efforts. Each opinion about the causes and solutions of the Great Depression are based upon economic, racial and social standing in America.
The New Deal was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to the great Depression during the 1930’s and the term came about during his campaign for presidency. This changed the way the federal government functions. It was proposed by FDR as the right of the people to make a comfortable living provided by the government. It was passed by Congress to be a set of government programs meant to fix the Great Depression and prevent another depression from occurring. Within the first one hundred days of his Presidency, President Roosevelt passed many pieces of legislation that created jobs, welfare payments, and created the NRA, which is where business leaders and government organizers worked together to establish industry standards of production,
In order to protect people’s benefits and provide a easeful life to people, Roosevelt started the New Deal followed his first inaugural address. When FDR gave his campaign speech at M...
This quote from his inaugural speech, sums up the mood of the American people as Roosevelt was elected to be President of the United States in the deepest part of the depression. He faced numerous challenges as a result of the mismanagement of the previous successive Republicans governments such as a large proportion of the American population were out of work and the banking crisis. Roosevelt had promised the American people a ‘new deal’ at his acceptance of the democratic nomination for president in 1932, however, his campaign only offered vague hints of what it would entail. He put the question of economic security on the agenda. President Roosevelt explicitly and consciously defined the New Deal as the embodiment of freedom, but of freedom of economic security rather than freedom of contract, or freedom of every man for himself.
- Davis, Kenneth S. FDR: The New Deal Years 1933-1937. New York: Random House, 1986.
25 Nov. 2013. “Economy.” CQ Researcher. 15 June 2013. Web.
John Maynard Keynes, British economist, journalist, was born on June 5th 1883, in Cambridge, England. His father, Dr. John Neville Keynes, was an economist and a philosopher. Keynes attended Eton and then Cambridge University. At first he studied Mathematics but then turned his attention to Economics when he was offered the job at the British treasurer after the First World War when the British economy was at pressure. A man who gained a modicum amount of wealth during 1919 to 1938, married to Lydia Lopokova in 1926 and passed away in April 21st, 1946. Keynes believed that price level has to be stabled in order to have a stabled economy, and that is only possible if interest rates go down when prices rise. He also believed that the market forces alone will not deliver full employment but boosting government spending (main force of the economy in Keynes theory) will aim in his theory full employment or close to that. He believes by Governments intervening and spending will finally stop recession, unemployment and most importantly depression. For spending will increase the aggregate demand of the economy.
In his presidential acceptance speech in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed to the citizens of the United States, “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.” The New Deal, beginning in 1933, was a series of federal programs designed to provide relief, recovery, and reform to the fragile nation. The U.S. had been both economically and psychologically buffeted by the Great Depression. Many citizens looked up to FDR and his New Deal for help. However, there is much skepticism and controversy on whether these work projects significantly abated the dangerously high employment rates and pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression. The New Deal was a bad deal for America because it only provided opportunities for a few and required too much government spending.
The United States faced the worst economic downfall in history during the Great Depression. A domino effect devastated every aspect of the economy, unemployment rate was at an all time high, banks were declaring bankruptcy and the frustration of the general public led to the highest suicide rates America has ever encountered. In the 1930’s Franklin D Roosevelt introduced the New Deal reforms, which aimed to “reconcile democracy, individual liberty and economic planning” (Liberty 863). The New Deal reforms were effective in the short term but faced criticism as it transformed the role of government and shaped the lives of American citizens.
“It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in the closing of his weekly “fireside chat” on March 12, 1933, while discussing, with the hundreds of thousands of bewildered United States citizens, the painful topic of the Great Depression. When Roosevelt took office in March of 1933, just five months after the fateful stock market crash that caused the depression, America was in full-blown economic turmoil. Every day after the crash, more and more people were laid off from their already low paying jobs, making it impossible for them to support their families, and even themselves. While characterizing the aftermath of the depression in his First Inaugural Address, FDR reveals that “the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.” FDR had an indisputable determination to solve this nationwide dilemma, evident in his solution, named The New Deal. However, it has been constantly debated whether the New Deal was a success or a failure. This question is now brought up, once again.
My research of Classical Economics and Keynesian Economics has given me the opportunity to form an opinion on this greatly debated topic in economics. After researching this topic in great lengths, I have determined the Keynesian Economics far exceeds greatness for America compared to that of Classical Economics. I will begin my paper by first addressing my understanding of both economic theories, I will then compare and contrast both theories, and end my paper with my opinions on why I believe Keynesian Economics is what is best for America.
The theory of economics does not furnish a body of settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique for thinking, which helps the possessor to draw correct conclusions. The ideas of economists and politicians, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." (John Maynard Keynes, the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money p 383)